There is one good thing in carrying your own knapsack; when you throw it off at evening, you feel so light from the relief, that your other fatigues are quite forgotten; you could almost set out for another day's walk. It seems as though some heavenly power had put wings to your shoulders. I do not expect, by this argument, to persuade any man to walk all day with a weary fardel on his back; it would be something like getting sick, in order to enjoy the pleasure of convalescence; but certainly, if one feels compelled to walk under a burden, what I have mentioned is some consolation and encouragement. Just so, it may be, that those who have the heaviest burdens to bear through life, will be the lighter for them when they lay them down at evening in the grave. Certainly they will, if the burdens were borne for Christ, if they came upon the shoulders in his service, or if they were carried in sweet cheerful submission to him, because he laid them there. Men will be lighter and brighter, for all such burdens, for ever and ever; lighter and brighter in their path of glory and happiness through eternity, than those, whose knapsack of evils was borne for them by others, or who had none to bear for Christ. Yes, burthened pilgrim, this light affliction worketh an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. But there is another kind of burden; happy indeed should we all be, if we could get rid of it, both now and for ever. This load on one's back makes the lonely traveller think of Bunyan's Pilgrim from the city of Destruction; but here among the mountains the pedestrian is very different from the Pilgrim towards Zion; for the spiritual traveller cannot get another person, whether man or boy, to carry his load of sins for him; he must bear his burden himself, till he comes to the cross, and there is but one Being who can take it off for him, but One, who has power or love enough to bear it for him. Even if other men could bear our spiritual burdens, they would not be loving enough to do it. There is indeed a system in the world, that pretends to take off this load, that has its sin-porters, if I may so call them, in its priests, who will both take the responsibility of a man's conscience, and remove the burden of sin whenever it presses; but for all this, the burden is worse in the end. It is infinitely better to bear it and to feel it, until Christ takes it off, than to be insensible to it, or go to false means to get rid of it. I had not been travelling more than two hours, when the clouds began to roll down the valley of Chamouny behind me, threatening a rainy day. The Valorsine, with its green slopes and clustered chalets, opened upon me. As I passed through the village, it began to rain, but I raised my umbrella, and trudged on. It rained harder, and grew dark and chilly. And now I began to think myself very imprudent for leaving my pilot-coat behind me, and even to question whether it were not wrong for an invalid to undertake at all a pedestrian tour in this manner, and indeed, would it not be best to go back to Chamouny at once, and take a different mode of travelling? But no, thought I, I will, at least, get to the Tête Noire, even in the rain, and there we can determine. But I was getting wet, and the prospect was quite desolate. One or two groups of travellers passed me in the way to Chamouny; they would get speedily to comfortable quarters. Now I met a peasant going home from the fields on account of the weather. You'll get very wet, said he, but if you turn back with me a little way, I have a good cloak that I will lend you, and will, if you wish, carry your knapsack for you, even to Martigny, where we can easily arrive by the evening. I turned back with him at once, to see at least what his carrique, as he called it, should be, and found that he had got really a magnificent great-coat of drab broadcloth, with near twenty capes, which would shield me effectually from the rain, and carry me dry and warm at least through the Tête Noire. He had a far more precious treasure in a sweet little daughter waiting for him in the rude house to which he carried me, where I sat down amidst a profusion of rakes, ploughs, grindstones, and rural implements unknown, that would have done honor to a New-England farm-house, while the peasant disappeared in a sort of hayloft above, to put on his "go-to-meeting clothes," for the voyage to Martigny. Meanwhile I arrayed myself in the carrique, and we set out. He told me he bought the coat at Paris for only thirty-five francs; and in all likelihood he would get the value of it again and again by thus lending it to storm-beaten travellers. Now I began to take back what I had said to myself about imprudence. If I can borrow a cloak in the Tête Noire, thought I to myself, so I can on the Grand St. Bernard, and elsewhere, if need be. What happens one day may happen the Allons! we'll not turn back to Chamouny yet. next. "Some few that I have known in days of old, An honest man, close buttoned to the chin, CHAPTER XIII. Cascade Barberina and Pass of the Tête Noire. My peasant guide was very reasonable in his demands, and exceedingly kind and communicative. He carried me by a side path to a scene of great beauty and grandeur, which travellers often miss seeing, because it is off the grand route and difficult to find, and many of the guides either do not know it, or do not wish to take the additional trouble of getting to it. This was the Cascade Barberina, one of the grandest waterfalls in Swit zerland. The torrent of water comes down from the glaciers of the Buet, and makes a sudden and most terrific plunge sheer over the precipice into a black jagged mountain gorge, which the ancients would have celebrated as one of the mouths of hell, with a mighty roar and crash that is almost stunning. On this side you stand upon a green knoll, a little grassy mountain, of which the verdure is perpetually wetted by the spray, and holding on by your staff firmly thrust into the ground, or by a tree on the borders of the gorge, you may look down into the roaring depths, see the cataract strike, and admire the conflict of the waters. The accompaniments are very grand; hanging masses of verdant forest on either side, but above, enormous, snowcovered mountains, out of which, from the mouth of a craggy gorge bursts at once upon you the raging torrent. In a sunny day you would have rainbows arching the torn rocks, glittering in the spray, and dancing over the impearled grass where you are standing But even amidst the rain, as I was, in my drab greatcoat, it was a scene of great sublimity. Coming to it, my guide carried me along the side of a mountain across the path of a tourmente, or mountain whirlwind, the marks of which, in themselves alone, are worth going far to see. A circuitous belt of the largest trees amidst the pine and fir forest that clothes the mountain, are stripped of branches, verdure, and sometimes bark, as if scathed by lightning, while others are broken and twisted, as you might twist a willow sapling. The fury of these tourmentes is inconceivable; a traveller overtaken by one of them would inevitably be lost; they would almost tear the crags themselves from the mountains. A similar scene is presented in the valley up which you pass from Chamouny to see the Cascade des Pelerines, marking in this case the passage of an avalanche, of which the wind produced by its swift flight has swept, torn, and broken a thousand trees in the same manner. At first you can hardly credit it, but you are convinced that it was the wind, and not the waves of the avalanche, by seeing some trees broken short off, half way down, as if the storm-angel had twisted and snapped them asunder with careful hands, close beside other trees prostrated and stripped, and others still standing. The traveller gazes upon these mute spectacles, mute, but fiercely eloquent, with deep interest. From the Cascade Barberina, we regained, by a romantic path, the grand route, which we could see far beneath us. 1 was hungry and tired, and it was high time to be so. My guide carried me into a mountain chalet, incomparably ruder than his own, built in the conical shape of a tent, with a hole at the top, so that the smoke might escape without the trouble of a chimney. As I stood to dry my clothes at the verge of the circle of stones where the fire was kindled, the rain came down upon me from the aperture above, demonstrating the comfort of the arrangements. The wigwam was inhabited by a very large family, and they talked in their native patois, of which I could not understand a syllable. They set before me a bowl of boiled milk, with black bread so hard, that one of its large round loaves might have served Achilles for an embossed shield, or Ajax to play at quoits with. Neither had it the property of sweetness any more than of softness, but it is wholesome, and would keep for ages. As we passed on from thence, we could discern a solitary umbrella at the bottom of the valley, with a traveller beneath it; my peasant told me it was the curate of the parish. If he was visiting his people on that rainy day, I am sure he deserved. credit, |